[Intanjir]

The mysty product website works fine for me, albeit a bit slow to load.
http://the-flower.biz/?p=37

They use the same sort of process as discussed throughout this thread.
You soak in one solution to dehydrate and remove color and then you soak in another solution to dye and to replace the solvent with another that won't evaporate.

I decided to do a little testing of my own.
I was interested whether it would be possible to find a solvent which preserved the color while displacing the water.

So, I bought a red rose to test the effect of various solvents on petal clippings.
Methanol was very effective at removing color.
My subjective impression of their relative strengths:
Dimethylsulfoxide>=Methanol>Acetone>Ethanol(~95%)>Isopropyl(91%)

The DMSO acted much slower than the methanol, but over a couple days, it has rendered portions of some of the petal clippings transparent.
The alcohols only achieved translucency.

A drop of HCl into the acids immediately turns the solution a bright red, demonstrating the pH-dependence of the rose anthocyanidin pigment.

Even the isopropyl removed a great deal of color and I doubt that it would be easy to preserve a red rose with the original color intact by this sort of procedure.
However, if you want to dye your flowers anyway then methanol seems like a good initial solvent.

[lomofreak]

Hi there,

I am also trying to preserve roses. What I did so far:

1) Let petals soak in 96%-ethanol for a day. The red petals lose most of their color and look light pink after a day.
2) Mixing ethanol with polyethylene glycol and adding dye (procion mx).
3) Putting petals into the mixture and let it soak for 1-2 days.
4) After removing the petals from the mixture, I rinse them with ethanol for aminute, so that the excessive polyethylene glycol gets removed from the surface. Otherwise it looks like plastic.

Now my problem is the following: Before the petals get dried, they look pretty transparent. But every time the petals get dried by air, most of the area of the petals gets "white" within a couple of minutes in a weird way. It seems when the alcohol is evaporating, it destroyes the cells? Or is it supposed to show this weird behaviour? This process doesn't occur all over the petals. Which looks pretty bad in the end. Any idea what is happening there? Any idea how to fix this?

I can't insert pics here, so please follow the link to the pics of the petals:

https://ibb.co/kigbHb
https://ibb.co/dcWMiG
https://ibb.co/hBksqw

[elturjuc]

Hi, I also tried to stabilize the roses but I'm not satisfied with the results at 100%, in the first bath I use alcohol denatured 90 ° leaving the rose for 24/48 hours (I look at the petals that are transparent) and this pasage gives me much well, the second bathroom (which does not satisfy me 100%) and glycol propylene ninety percent and ten percent glycerine, and then a little food coloring I leave the rose for 2 even 7 days then I leave them to dry in the open air but they dry very slowly after 1 month the petals are still a little damp from the second bath, the flower is beautiful but stains everything that is close to them and then and a little wet not like those endings on the internet. I would like to know the real recipe too.

[Arkcon]

Alright folks, I've only done this once before, but I think this another Citizen Chemist thread that's run its course, so I've locked this thread.

Preserving living tissue touches on important chemistry concepts -- dehydration and replacing moisture with preservative is what is done with histology samples.  And its great to use science to advance our crafting skill and highlight our artistic ability.

However, the endless pseudo advertisements, and post after post about how we all have to email you the steps that are already in this thread so you can quit your day job and make a living with this are going to have to stop now.